do rejoice' for me to sing for joy is no new thing; but to preach for joy, as I have done in the commencement of this epistle, is a pitch of extravagant rapture to which I never rose before. I read your letter-I literally jumped for joy. How could such a mercurial creature as a poet lumpishly keep his seat on the receipt of the best news from his best friend? I seized my gilt-headed Wangee rod, an instrument indispensably necessary, in my left hand, in the moment of inspiration and rapture; and stride, stride -quick and quicker-out skipped I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my joy by retail. To keep within the bounds of prose was impossible. Mrs Little's' is a more elegant, but not a more sincere compliment to the sweet little fellow, than I, extempore almost, poured out to him in the following verses : STANZAS ON THE BIRTH OF A POSTHUMOUS CHILD, BORN Sweet floweret, pledge o' meikle love, November hirples o'er the lea And gane, alas! the sheltering tree May He who gives the rain to pour, May He, the friend of wo and want, But late she flourished, rooted fast, Blest be thy bloom, thou lovely gem, And from thee many a parent stem limps pangs 1 Mrs Little was a poetical milkmaid in the service of Mrs Henri at Loudoun Castle. For an account of her, see Contemporaries of Burns. Edinburgh: 1840. I am much flattered by your approbation of my Tam o' Shanter, which you express in your former letter, though, by the by, you load me in that said letter with accusations heavy and many, to all which I plead, Not guilty! Your book is, I hear, on the road to reach me. As to printing of poetry, when you prepare it for the press, you have only to spell it right, and place the capital letters properly as to the punctuation, the printers do that themselves. I have a copy of Tam o' Shanter ready to send you by the first opportunity-it is too heavy to send by post. I heard of Mr Corbet lately. He, in consequence of your recommendation, is most zealous to serve me. Please favour me soon with an account of your good folks; if Mrs H. is recovering, and the young gentleman doing well. R. B. The subsequent history of Mrs Henri and her son is in some points worthy of being commemorated. In a subsequent letter, Burns deplores her dangerous and distressing situation in France, exposed to the tumults of the Revolution; and he has soon after occasion to condole with his venerable friend on the death of her daughter in a foreign land. When this sad event took place, the orphan child fell under the immediate care of his paternal grandfather, who, however, was soon obliged to take refuge in Switzerland, leaving the infant behind him. Years passed; he and the Scotch friends of the child heard nothing of it, and concluded that it was lost. At length, when the elder Henri was enabled to return to his ancestral domains, he had the unspeakable satisfaction of finding that his grandson and heir was alive and well, having never been removed from the place. The child had been protected and reared with the greatest care by a worthy female named Mademoiselle Susette, formerly a domestic of the family. This excellent person had even contrived, through all the levelling violences of the intervening period, to preserve in her young charge the feelings appropriate to his rank. Though absolutely indebted to her industry for his bread, she had caused him always to be seated by himself at table, and regularly waited on, so that the otherwise plebeian circumstances in which he lived did not greatly affect him. The subject of Burns's stanzas was, a very few years ago, proprietor of the family estates; and it is agreeable to add, that Mademoiselle Susette then lived in his paternal mansion, in the enjoyment of that grateful respect to which her fidelity and discretion so eminently entitled her. 1 One of the general supervisors of Excise. TO WILLIAM DUNBAR, W. S. ELLISLAND, 17th January 1791. I am not gone to Elysium, most noble colonel,' but am still here in this sublunary world, serving my God by propagating his image, and honouring my king by begetting him loyal subjects. Many happy returns of the season await my friend. May the thorns of Care never beset his path! May Peace be an inmate of his bosom, and Rapture a frequent visitor of his soul! May the blood-hounds of Misfortune never track his steps, nor the screechowl of Sorrow alarm his dwelling! May Enjoyment tell thy hours, and Pleasure number thy days, thou friend of the bard! Blessed be he that blesseth thee, and cursed be he that curseth thee !!!' As a further proof that I am still in the land of existence, I send you a poem, the latest I have composed. I have a particular reason for wishing you only to shew it to select friends, should you think it worthy a friend's perusal; but if, at your first leisure hour, you will favour me with your opinion of, and strictures on, the performance, it will be an additional obligation on, dear sir, your deeply-indebted humble servant, R. B. 2 TO MR PETER HILL. ELLISLAND, 17th January 1791. Take these two guineas, and place them overagainst that damned account of yours, which has gagged my mouth these five or six months! I can as little write good things as apologies to the man I owe money to. O the supreme curse of making three guineas do the business of five! Not all the labours of Hercules, not all the Hebrews' three centuries of Egyptian bondage, were such an insuperable business, such an infernal task!! Poverty! thou halfsister of Death, thou cousin-german of Hell!-where shall I find force of execration equal to the amplitude of thy demerits? Oppressed by thee, the venerable ancient, grown hoary in the practice of every virtue, laden with years and wretchedness, implores a little, little aid to support his existence, from a stony-hearted son of Mammon, whose sun of prosperity never knew a cloud, and is by him denied and insulted. Oppressed by thee, the man of sentiment, whose heart glows with independence, and melts with sensibility, inly pines under the neglect, or writhes, in bitterness of soul, under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth. Oppressed by 1 So styled as president of the convivial society called the Crochallan Fencibles. In the original account, penes Mr Thomas Thorburn, Dumfries, Hill enters £3, 3s. to Burns's credit under January 20, 1791, leaving a balance to debit of £3, 7s. 5d. It is probable that two guineas has been written or printed by mistake for three. thee, the son of Genius, whose ill-starred ambition plants him at the tables of the fashionable and polite, must see, in suffering silence, his remark neglected, and his person despised, while shallow greatness, in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause. Nor is it only the family of Worth that have reason to complain of thee-the children of Folly and Vice, though in common with thee the offspring of Evil, smart equally under thy rod. Owing to thee, the man of unfortunate disposition and neglected education is condemned as a fool for his dissipation; despised and shunned as a needy wretch, when his follies as usual bring him to want; and when his unprincipled necessities drive him to dishonest practices, he is abhorred as a miscreant, and perishes by the justice of his country. But far otherwise is the lot of the man of family and fortune. His early follies and extravagance, are spirit and fire; his consequent wants, are the embarrassments of an honest fellow; and when, to remedy the matter, he has gained a legal commission to plunder distant provinces, or massacre peaceful nations, he returns, perhaps, laden with the spoils of rapine and murder, lives wicked and respected, and dies a scoundrel and a lord. Nay, worst of all, alas for helpless woman!-the needy prostitute, who has shivered at the corner of the street, waiting to earn the wages of casual prostitution, is left neglected and insulted, ridden down by the chariot-wheels of the coroneted RIP, hurrying on to the guilty assignation-she who, without the same necessities to plead, riots nightly in the same guilty trade. Well, divines may say of it what they please, but execration is to the mind what phlebotomy is to the body-the vital sluices of both are wonderfully relieved by their respective R. B. evacuations. As poverty, or at least narrowness of circumstances, has been painfully associated with the name of Burns, it is of importance to note at what time, after his sudden transient access of fortune, his purse again became light. He certainly was at ease in this respect down to the early part of 1790, when he proffered assistance to his youngest brother William, in the event of its being wanted. Even in the fall of that year, when the death of William in London caused an unexpected call to be made upon the poet for the discharge of the expenses incurred by the sickness and funeral of the young man, it appears that payment was promptly made.1 We learn from this letter, that Burns had for some This appears from a letter found among Burns's papers, and now in the possession of Mr Thomas Thorburn, Dumfries. 'To Mr ROBERT BURNS.-Sir, I received your favour of the 5th instant this day, containing a bill for the money expended in your deceased brother's sickness and funeral. Wishing you all health and happiness, I am, sir, your very humble servant, W. BARBER.-Strand, Oct. 8, 1790.' months before the close of 1790 begun to feel himself in some embarrassment for money. What is more, the debt which had gagged him with respect to his friend Hill appears to have been comparatively a trifle-only £6, 10s. 5d. To send £3, 3s. towards an account for a sum so little larger, certainly illustrates in some degree the 'supreme curse of making three guineas do the business of five.' It is, nevertheless, equally true and curious, that we have to see Burns at this crisis in the new and unexpected character of an accommodator or creditor. It is a trivial affair, which would not be worth noting in the life of any ordinary man. In that of Burns, considering how exclusively we have hitherto heard of him as a poor man, in the way of being patronised by others, even the smallest matter on the other side has some interest. There was a certain Alexander Crombie, a builder at Dalswinton, who had reared the farm-edifices at Ellisland, and whom Burns had probably found to be a good fellow struggling with the difficulties of inadequate capital. A bill lies before me, drawn by Burns for £20, under date 'Dumfries, December 15, 1790,' at three months, and accepted by Crombie. It is indorsed by Burns to Mr David Staig, agent for the Bank of Scotland at Dumfries. An instrument of protest for non-payment of this bill, drawn up on the 18th of March 1791, is also preserved, shewing that Crombie had not been ready to withdraw it at the proper time. This, after the lapse of some time, had been intimated to the poet by a letter from Mr James Gracie, an officer in the bank, and we obtain from another source a note of Burns in answer thereto : GLOBE INN, 8 o'clock P.M. SIR-I have your letter anent Crombie's bill. Your forbearance has been very great. I did it to accommodate the thoughtless fellow. He asks till Wednesday week. If he fail, I pay it myself. In the meantime, if horning and caption be absolutely necessary, grip him by the neck, and welcome. Yours, ROBERT BUrns. It is perhaps just barely worthy of being mentioned, that Mr Hill signs a quittance for payment in full to Burns, 5th December 1791, when the poet would probably be somewhat more in cash than for some time before, in consequence of the sale of his farming effects. The sum was £8, 16s. 8d. The books collected by a man being an index of his taste, it may be curious to see what those were which Burns obtained from Peter Hill. We find them to have been as follows:-Letters on |